Deported to danger

SANDUSKY — It's not pretty when U.S. Customs agents remove a person from the country. The person being deported is often deprived of everything they own except the clothes they're wearing and left alone in dangerous and unfamiliar places. A Corso's worker arrested June 5 and deported by U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) agents last week was left in one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico. An ICE spokesman confirmed she was sent back to Mexico after a prior deportation order was reinstated, but he declined to say any more than that.But an advocate for migrant workers said the process is needlessly cruel. "She was just dropped off there with nothing but the clothes she was wearing at Corso's," HOLA executive director Veronica Dahlberg said. "She was at the border with no clothes and no money in a very dangerous city."HOLA Ohio is a Latino community advocacy group helping families affected by the ICE detainments.The deported woman lived in the Jefferson Street Trailer Park in Norwalk, like many of the Corso's workers detained by ICE, with her husband and her three U.S.-born American children. Her husband is struggling to take care of the children while working at the same time."(He's) at a loss for what to do when his wife was deported," Dahlberg said. "She was moved to another jail and the next thing we know she was calling from the border."HOLA contacted the Mexican consulate and asked people it knows on the other side of the border to help the woman."We try to find people who can meet them, get them money, a bus ticket or help them find their way to a shelter, but it's difficult to set this up when deportation is unexpected," Dahlberg said. "They're very secretive about when they're deporting people. We don't usually know until they're calling us from Mexico."The woman said she was in the Mexican border town of Reynosa and would wait for HOLA's associates to meet her at a Walmart. But HOLA's contacts said Reynosa doesn't have a Walmart."She was in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, a completely different city than she originally thought," Dahlberg said.Nuevo Laredo is in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, one of the most dangerous states in the country. The U.S. State Department has a "Level 4: Do Not Travel" warning, the highest level for potential danger. That is the same level as war-torn Syria.Gang violence, murder, armed robbery, kidnapping, and sexual assault are common in the area and the local law enforcement has limited capability to respond to it, according to the state department.Dahlberg said they were able to find people who could meet the woman and make sure she was safe. The woman and her family have a new set of challenges and tough decisions to make."I think they want to send the children to Mexico to be with her," Dahlberg said. "We're helping them figure out how to go about that."The children — American citizens — need to be issued passports to enter Mexico lawfully, and, as Americans living in a country they've never known they face potentially harsh treatment from their piers. The woman's family's story issn't unique. In the Fiscal Year of 2017, ICE deported more than 220,000 undocumented aliens, a decrease from past years.ICE DeportationBefore a person can be deported, ICE must make sure their home country is willing to accept them. If the country won't then they must be released from ICE's custody. Mexico tends to be receptive.After a deportee is flown to a city close to the Mexican-American border, ICE uses vans or buses to shuttle people back to a city across the border.If the deportee is from a country other than Mexico, ICE flies them to their home country on a charter or commercial flight at taxpayer cost.When they return to their birth country they normally do so with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Deportees are even deprived of their shoelaces and belts out of fear they'd be used in a suicide attempt, the New York Times reported."This is a recent thing," Dahlberg said. "They've started to confiscate all their identification and their possessions before they deport them."ICE's responsibility to the deportee ends at the border. Once in their country of origin, the deportee is on his or her own to find out how to get back to their home town or find a place to stay.But according to the American Immigration Council, 81 percent of deportees deprived of their possession couldn't afford to travel home and 53 percent were in danger."It's especially problematic for the women who are deported to very violent border cities," Dahlberg said. "We've been asking them to stop deporting them at night."Organizations like HOLA and the Kino Border Initiative have made efforts to help deportees readjust and get help when they return.The Mexican government has started a program to try to help with the influx of deported people into its country.Reach reporter Michael Harrington at michaelharrington@sanduskyregister.com, follow the Register at Facebook.com/SanduskyRegisterInvestigators conduct a search warrant at Corso's Flower and Garden Center on U.S. 250 in Perkins Township on Tuesday, June 5, 2018.